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February 2017

China 1, Trump 0” has been the widely claimed verdict after President Donald Trump assured his Chinese counterpart on February 9 that, contrary to what he had led many to believe, his administration will stand by the “One China principle,” which recognizes Taiwan as part of China.

Chairman of the Senate of the Parliament of Kazakhstan Kassym-Jomart Tokayev told a panel discussion at the Feb. 18 Munich Security Conference that it is important to build reliable and friendly relations between the countries of Central Asia and Eurasia and the rest of the world.

The coup was planned for election day. Wearing fake police uniforms and armed with assault rifles, more than a dozen Kremlin-linked plotters were allegedly preparing to storm the parliament of the tiny Balkan nation of Montenegro and assassinate its Prime Minister. Their goal, according to the government's investigators, was to stop the country of 620,000 from joining NATO, which would give the U.S.-led alliance control of nearly every northern Mediterranean port from Gibraltar to the Bosporus. On a tip from an informant, real Montenegrin police rounded up the plotters as polls opened for the vote in October. Two ringleaders, both suspected agents of the Russian intelligence services, are now back in Russia.

It has been more than three years since Ukrainians gathered at Maidan Square in Kyiv on the night of Nov. 21, 2013, to demand closer integration with Europe and the resignation of President Viktor Yanukovych. As the protests spread and Yanukovych refused to sign the Association Agreement with the EU, a full-scale uprising forced him to flee and led to conflicts across the country that have since claimed the lives of more than 10,000 people. It also led to a de facto division of the country between a pro-European west and a pro-Russian east, as well as loss of Crimean Peninsula to Russia.

Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics, who is on a visit in Azerbaijan, said in an exclusive interview with Trend that the main purpose of his visit to the country is the desire to continue a fruitful political and economic dialogue with it.

Turkey, Georgia and Azerbaijan plan to increase the volume of mutual trade up to $20 billion, said Turkey’s Deputy Economy Minister Fatih Metin at the 5th Turkey-Azerbaijan-Georgia business forum in Istanbul Feb. 17.

The continuing frenzy in Washington about contacts between members of the Trump team and Russia has diverted attention from the first real test of the new US president’s campaign pledge to improve relations with Moscow.

Volodymyr Horbulin, Director of the National Institute for Strategic Studies, twice served as Director of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine and one of the first founders of the National Security and Defense Council, rarely gives speeches in public.